The goal of website spoofing is to steal sensitive information, such as passwords, credit card numbers, and other personal data, by tricking the user into believing that they are interacting with a legitimate website.
Web spoofing attacks often use fake emails or social media messages to lure users to a fake website, where they are prompted to enter their login credentials or personal information. The attackers may also use malware to redirect users to a spoofed website without their knowledge.
How to do a web spoofing attack
To carry out this type of attack, different techniques can be used to attract the user’s attention to the fake website:
- The attacker can put a link to the fake website on a known website.
- If you know the user’s email, it is possible to send an email that includes the link to the fake website.
- You can modify the original website with the fake one in real time by executing javascript code or installing plug-ins.
Types of web spoofing attacks
They can be divided mainly into two:
Passive attack
The attacker passively observes the traffic of the attacked user, gathering information about the pages visited. The information that the user enters in the different forms, which will be sent to the web servers, is acquired by the attacker. In this way, it is possible to obtain sensitive information such as usernames and passwords, as well as banking information.
Active attack
The attacker can modify any information that travels between the attacked machine and the different web servers. For example, once the user submits some form to make a transaction, the attacker can modify both the recipient and the amount. Likewise, the attacker can also modify the information sent from the web server to the user.
Prevention, identification and action against web spoofing
To protect yourself from web spoofing attacks, it’s important to be cautious when entering your login credentials or personal information online. Always verify the authenticity of a website before entering sensitive information, and be sure to use strong, unique passwords for each of your accounts. It’s also a good idea to use two-factor authentication whenever possible to add an extra layer of security.
Web spoofing is hardly detectable; Perhaps the best measure is a browser plugin that shows the IP of the server visited at all times: if the IP never changes when visiting different web pages, it means that we are probably suffering from this type of attack.
There are some web services, such as the website desenmascara.me ,than can help detecting if a web is being impersonated or not.
If you are being targeted by web impersonation or phishing attacks, do not hesitate to contact us. We will carry out a study of your case and we will help you to eliminate this type of web from the network.
